During the night, there was a cryptocurrency attack. On Monday evening, attackers exploited the vulnerability in the cross-chain Blockchain protocol Nomad. While the exact amount has not been confirmed, reports suggest the hackers stole over $150 million. Here are the details…
Cryptocurrency platform hacked
Attackers exploited a vulnerability in the network of Nomad, the cross-chain Blockchain protocol. Nomad has also updated its users in the same way. The company also asked users to be aware of copycats. Nomad tweeted:
We are aware of the incident involving the Nomad token bridge. We’re currently investigating the case. We will provide updates as information becomes available. We are aware of impersonators pretending to be Nomad and providing fake addresses to raise money. We are not yet providing instructions for returning bridge funds. Disregard messages from channels other than Nomad’s official channel.
We’re aware of impersonators posing as Nomad and providing fraudulent addresses to collect funds. We aren’t yet providing instructions to return bridge funds. Disregard comms from all channels other than Nomad’s official channel: @nomadxyz_
— Nomad (⤭⛓🏛) (@nomadxyz_) August 2, 2022
The MoonBeam network was paused while the team was investigating. This will disable the use of MoonBeam for regular transactions and smart contract interactions. As we have also reported as Kriptokoin.com, Nomad ended its $22 million seed investment round last week. It had secured investment from giants such as Coinbase Ventures, Polychain Capital, and others.
Details of the hack
It all started with a dubious transaction that removed $2.3 million worth of 100 wrapped Bitcoins (WBTC) from the bridge. However, the incident saw a number of tokens stolen by exploiting the vulnerability in the bridge. Buna Wrapped Ether (WETH), Covalent Query Token (CQT), USD Coin (USDC), Frax (FRAX), IAGON (IAG), Hummingbird Governance Token (HBOT), Card Starter (CARDS), GeroWallet (GERO), Dai ( DAI) and others.
Interestingly, this exploit was quite different from other bridge exploits that occurred in 2022. During the hack, hundreds of addresses received tokens directly from the bridge. Also, the abusers removed all these tokens in an unusual way. They received the equivalent amount of tokens from the bridge. The attackers processed more than 200 transactions, with a total of exactly $202,440,725413 each. Bridge exploits have been a very common form of exploitation in recent years. Millions of dollars of investor funds were lost in the process. In the past, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has expressed concerns about the use of bridges for cross-chain funds transfer.
Blockchain bridges allow users to transfer their crypto from one Blockchain to another. This marks the fourth attack on Blockchain bridges in recent months. In late March, Ronin Network, behind Axie Infinity, which supports gaming, was the subject of a security breach. He lost more than $625 million. Meanwhile, Wormhole, which connects the Ethereum and Solana networks, lost about $320 million in early February.
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